Happy Summer!

Just a few more days of school left, but it's a busy time. We held our Spring Program last week, Kindergarteners celebrated on Friday, and Sixth Graders will graduate on Tuesday. OMG, those children who have to wear school uniforms throughout the year really blossom on these special days.

Photo slideshows have been posted on our website with more to come.

Have a great summer, and thanks to all who've visited our sites!

A special visit from a former 1941 student!

We get visits from former Hickam Elementary students every once in a while, and occasionally they return to us as parents whose own children become our students.

But Jeannette Kingery wins the prize for being one of the very first students to attend Hickam Post School -- in 1941!

Hickam Post School had just opened and she and her sister were among its first students. Her father was in the Navy and stationed at Pearl Harbor, and her family lived on 5th Street on Hickam Base. She was a second grader at the time.

On Dec. 7, 1941, she witnessed the attack of Pearl Harbor with Japanese planes dropping bombs and strafing the airfield and Pearl Harbor. She remembers being evacuated in an auto caravan with other families to Honolulu during and after the attack. Her family stayed with a Japanese family in Honolulu whom they had known because they had rented a house from them before moving on base.

After the attack, she and her younger sister did not go to school because they were too young to wear gas masks. Her twelve-year-old sister was the only one who could still attend school.

Sometime in 1942, her mother and two sisters were evacuated to San Diego aboard a troop ship. She said that a Japanese submarine actually fired two torpedoes at them, but, fortunately, missed its target. (Supposedly the Japanese skipper reported that he had sunk the ship.)

When they were in San Diego the following school year, she had to repeat the second grade because there were no records that indicated that she had been in the second grade at Hickam and had passed.

Jeannette now resides in Oregon, and is retired. She is writing a family history, and their experiences during the attack is one piece of that history.

This was her first visit back to Hawaii since 1941.

Happy 2007!

Teachers and students of Hickam Elementary have been enjoying their first-ever three-week winter vacation, but that will come to an end (*sniff*) in a few days. It'll be good to see everyone again, bright-eyed and rejuvenated, and ready to jump into the third quarter of school of a brand new year.

Four new slide shows have been posted on our school's website, including pictures from our incredible Winter Concert.

Hau'oli Makahiki Hou!

Be one of the first...

... to sign our Hickam Elementary guestbook!

We finally have a replacement for the one that disappeared years ago. It's brand new as of tonight, so you might be one of the first to sign in!

Don't worry, this blog will be here. The guestbook is just one more way former students and families can keep in touch.

Another rainy day at Hickam

People think Hawaii is all rainbows and sunshine, but we seemed to have had more than our share of rainstorms, floods, and landslides recently. Last week was another rainy one, and some classes had to use long sheets of plastic to get from one place to another. Above are second graders making their way to the cafeteria.

Mahalo!

"Mahalo" = "Thank you" in Hawaiian

Wow, the number of people who've found this school blog and left comments is incredible! We read and respond to each one, but haven't kept up with putting up new posts, mostly because we don't know what would grab former students' and families' interest.

Today someone anonymously posted links to two YouTube videos of a 1989 Hickam Elementary chorus performance. We were blown away; the performance itself shows such talent on the part of the students and chorus director, but the fact that someone thought of letting us know about it is equally amazing. The videos are:

Chorus Performance Part 1
Chorus Performance Part 2

Weren't those kids great?? OK, here's something that some of you might respond to -- do YOU have a picture or video of your time at Hickam Elementary that you'd like to share with us? Email us with photo attachments or links to pictures/videos.

Mahalo!!

Do you remember your first day of school?

Students began streaming back to Hickam Elementary yesterday. Because we started so much earlier this school year, some haven't registered yet and might trickle in the next couple of weeks. Our enrollment is quite high already, and will probably continue to increase for a while.

Ahh, the first day of school. New supplies, new faces, and for many, a totally new school in a totally new state. Some of our students are veterans at being "the new kid in class", having already attended several different schools in their short educational careers. For our youngest, Hickam Elementary is their very first in what might become a long list of schools.

When asked, most children use words such as "excited", "scared", and "shy" to describe how they felt their first day at school. I wonder how many adults can remember how they felt their very first day, especially at a school they had never attended before.

Chime in: how did you feel on your first day at school? Or more specifically, how did you feel on your first day at Hickam Elementary?

First day of summer

shot from Duke's Waikiki restaurant on Saturday -- great view and yummy food!

Today is officially the first day of summer, but for us at Hickam Elementary, summer made its appearance the day school let out a week and a half ago. The last week of school was chock-full of parties, awards assemblies, report cards (!) graduations, leis, and farewells.

Both students and teachers will have to pack their fun and relaxation into a shorter amount of time this summer. The single school calendar has us returning on July 27th, almost a month earlier than in previous years. This means that we'll get more breaks during the school year, but that the summer will go by more quickly than before.

But hey, we're in Hawaii, where almost every day is like summer, if you don't count the 46 straight days of rain we had in March and April!

Trolling for HES alumni

I rarely go on MySpace, but figured that'd be a good place to start looking for Hickam Elementary alumni. Didn't want to scare 'em by contacting them directly, instead I posted to a HES alumni group and asked if they'd visit this blog. I might end up contacting a few later, the ones who'd remember me either when I was a classroom teacher or more recently as the tech coordinator/computer teacher.

One person contacted me and said he'd stop by here sometime. Cool. Let's get this thing going!

Let's hear from ya!

A few years ago we had a popular online guestbook on our school's website, with oodles of messages from former students, some who attended as far back as the 1950s! The site that was hosting the guestbook up suddenly disappeared, along with all those wonderful entries.

I'm hoping that this blog can take its place.

If you are a former student, parent, or friend of Hickam Elementary, or if you have current ties with our school, please leave a comment to this or other posts I'll put up. We'd love to hear from you!